Opinion: Closing gun background check loophole would save lives

Anita Manning is a member of the Delaware chapter of Moms Demand Action(Photo: Courtesy of Anita Manning)

Anita Manning is a member of Moms Demand Action-Delaware. She lives in Wilmington.

Many years ago, I was married to a man who held a gun on me all night. Our two small children were in the next room. He was angry because our marriage and finances were shaky and he knew I was thinking of leaving him. So he bought a gun at a store in Wilmington and held it to my head.

Throughout the night, he talked. I placated him, thinking about the children sleeping just down the hall. Finally, as the sun came up, I told him if he wanted to kill me, he would just have to do it. I was exhausted and was going to bed.

He looked surprised, but let me go.

It might have ended differently, and if it had, it would be just one more domestic violence-related shooting.

Gun violence is so common in our community and our country that even multiple shootings often barely make it past one news cycle. We rarely give a thought to the thousands of Americans who survive shootings, many with life-altering injuries that make it impossible for them to live fully productive lives.

Efforts to stem this violence have been made since my own personal night of terror back in the 1970s. Since its enactment in 1994, the Brady Handgun Violence Protection Act has required background checks on licensed gun sales in order to block violent felons, domestic abusers, and people who have been involuntarily committed from buying guns from licensed dealers, manufacturers or importers.

But therein lies a loophole: Anyone who wants to buy a firearm without undergoing a background check has only to look for unlicensed gun sellers online, at gun shows or within their communities.

Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America believes it is long past time for Congress to update a quarter-century-old law to require background checks for all gun sales. House Resolution 8, the Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2019 co-sponsored by Delaware’s U.S. Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester, would help keep guns out of the hands of people who shouldn’t have them by requiring background checks for all gun sales.

Unlicensed sales would work just like licensed sales. Unlicensed sellers would meet their buyers at the business of a licensed gun dealer, who would run a background check, as they already do with their own customers.

Background checks are a foundational way to keep guns out of the wrong hands, and are an important tool for law enforcement. According to Everytown for Gun Safety, more than 3.5 million illegal gun sales to violent criminals and others prohibited from gun ownership have been blocked since 1994, thanks to background checks.

But a recent investigation [by Everytown for Gun Safety] showed that on one website alone in 2018, more than one million ads for firearm sales were posted by unlicensed sellers that would not require a background check. The scariest part is that the investigation also found that 1 in 9 people looking to buy guns from unlicensed sellers would fail a background check.

Background checks are favored by 85 percent of voters, including 79 percent of Republicans, according to the Pew Research Center. They’re associated with reductions in firearm murders, suicide and firearm trafficking, and form the basic foundation for comprehensive gun violence prevention policies.

Research shows that state laws that bar domestic abusers from access to firearms see reduced rates of intimate partner murder.

Other initiatives, such as “red flag’’ laws, which empower family members or law enforcement to ask a judge to temporarily block a person who poses a threat to himself or others from getting a gun, and domestic violence laws that would prevent abusers from having a firearm after a conviction or while under a restraining order, also should be taken up by Congress. These common-sense regulations are not aimed at keeping people from owning guns. They aim to keep people safer.

HR 8, requiring background checks for all gun sales, is critical to helping prevent gun violence and making our homes and communities safer.

As we read, almost daily, about another shooting, another family torn apart, little schoolchildren having lockdown drills, and young people afraid to attend concerts, the problem of gun violence in America can seem intractable. That’s why Moms Demand Action-Delaware invites you to join us as we work together to make change.